Being REAL

For once I overcame the fear of doing what I ‘should’ be doing and did what my heart told me to do. For once I overcame the need to be socially correct and please everyone and put on a smile on my face when all I wanted to do was hide in a corner and feel the rawness in my heart. For once I expressed myself and did not give excuses, simply said what it is that matter to me. It felt good. For once my heart told me – ‘you listened’. This experience tells me how negligent I have been in being kind to myself. How long have I let my most essential self (my being) be unheard, unseen and unappreciated by me? It is meaningful to me that I was born on the day that is now referred to as the peace day. It’s meaningful to me because I believe in peace and I have always tried to find peace in my heart. Only lately I’m finding the courage to act on it because it means I need to break habits, displease people – most of all, it means being disapproved and not quite making people comfortable with my views and opinions. But, I have come to that point in life where I either embrace myself or kill myself (metaphorically of course). From this point onwards, I refuse to linger in the grey area of life for I have always longed to embrace the intricacies of my inner self and live life from a deep place. It was just that I was waiting for someone to give me permission, someone to say ‘It’s okay, be yourself, we still accept you”. At least now I know the problem. I am the problem. I get in my own way. How stupid is that. Ok let me stop with the self-criticism and just work on self-acceptance. Hopefully self-acceptance does not take another decade to achieve because I’m a bit slow – self ‘realisation’ took 30 years! Isn’t it true that first we need to create peace inside before we achieve world peace? This peace day, I make a promise to myself to be true, first to me and then to the world. Here’s to me – the real one that lost the away.

Ordinary Miracles

Even though it is a Monday, today feels just right for some reason. It’s funny how I can’t quite pin-point what it is that makes this day more agreeable to me. It must be the extra effort I put into folding up the three-week old laundry that was sitting around at 11.30pm last night. Why do unarranged laundry and dishes get to me so much? It must be how I perceive it as incompetence on my part. Perhaps it’s because Devan is a walking talking comedian now. He makes me laugh in incredible ways. Like when I’m putting him to bed and sing a lullaby he ends up trying to imitate me on the word ‘Putha’ (Son) and giggles. The way he runs around the house like someone is about to light the house on fire, his love of spoons, keys and cars; I mean all objects containing round things that look like wheels. The way his vocabulary is expanding though everything sounds the same like ‘Ba’ for bath and bus and button. The way he puts up a tantrum when the keys and spoons get confiscated and tries to make it an Oscar winning performance. When we drive off together in the morning, how he sings self-composed lyrics like ‘car-car, ba-ba’ in varying tones. Best of all how he knows to smile when I tell him that I love him. Although life is not perfect, life is good and full of ordinary miracles and I feel more than grateful. I feel humbled.